


(Won’t Say) I’m in Love

by Celyan



Series: Works for 007 Fest 2020 [26]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Almost confessing one’s feelings, Betting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:47:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25597528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Celyan/pseuds/Celyan
Summary: Q was drunk when he made the bet with Eve, and now he has to live with the consequences.
Relationships: James Bond/Q
Series: Works for 007 Fest 2020 [26]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1813132
Comments: 3
Kudos: 74





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Trope prompt table’s prompt ‘Fake Marriage’ and for the following 2017 fest anon prompt: ‘00Q. One night when drunk, Eve and Q make an interesting bet.’
> 
> Thanks to SandyWormbook for the beta.

Q looks at the email he’s just received from Eve and sighs very, very deeply. 

Rereading it reveals no hidden meanings between the lines, but Q expects as much. No, it’s all very innocent and straightforward, almost as though it’s one of the regular emails they exchange daily.

The message, simple as it is, still seems to mock him with its ordinariness. 

_I just wanted to remind you that you’ve only got four days left to finish the thing from Saturday._

Q glares at his laptop and unwillingly thinks back on Saturday evening. He’d spent it with Eve, good wine and takeaway, and some very bad movies she’s insisted they’d watch. Those had become more tolerable after she’d suggested to make a drinking game out of it, but only a bit. 

And that, Q now sees very clearly, was where it all went wrong. 

It had been in the middle of the third movie and after they’d finished up the bottle of tequila that Q had dug up from his woefully under stocked liquor cabinet when Eve had looked at him with an expression that spoke of pure mischief and suggested a friendly wager. 

In all its simpleness, the gist of it is this: Q has until Friday evening to come clean to Bond about his feelings for him. The method is unimportant as long as the message gets understood (so “No mumbling or telling it to him while he’s asleep, Q, and trust me when I say that I _will_ find it out!”), and it doesn’t need to be anything more complicated than Q admitting that he likes him. If he can manage it in the allotted time, he gets to give Eve a task of his choosing, anything he fancies.

But if he fails, well. Then Eve gets to deal with all the details of their covers the next time Q is required to join Bond in the field. 

She’d smiled, cheery and perhaps a touch devilish, and told him that it would _definitely_ include a honeymoon suite. 

Q had not heard anything about the bet from Eve on Sunday (when he’d been somewhat hungover—and he knows for a fact that she had been in a similar state, as well) or on Monday, when he’d spent most of the day buried under various projects he hadn’t had the time to work on for a while. 

He’d almost dared to hope that she’d have forgotten all about it. 

But of course, Eve never forgets anything in her life, so why would she forget about this? After all, she’d also told him that she was doing it to help him, having had numerous conversations about Bond with him.

Q sighs again and resolutely closes down the email without replying to it. As Eve has so aptly pointed out, he still has four days to do what needs to be done and win the wager.

It can’t be that hard, now can it?

*

For the next three and half days, Q makes a serious effort

He meets Bond at least twice a day, and catches glimpses of him on several occasions when Bond is on his way to or from Q Branch—he seems to have decided to spend as much time as he can there whenever he’s off mission lately, and Q finds it puzzling. Though not puzzling enough to confront him about his reasons, no; he figures that Bond is after priority access to all the new gadgets they’re working on, or else he simply enjoys spending time where ‘the magic happens’, as he’d once put it. 

He’d been somewhat delirious and a lot more sleep deprived then, though, so Q knows to take whatever he’d said at the time with a grain of salt. 

Still, Bond being there more often does _not_ make it any less difficult for Q to open his mouth and just say it. 

Quite the contrary, in fact. He could be in his office, ostensibly going through his work email while simultaneously trying to come up with a good way to confess his feelings, and he’d look up and see Bond, and all his carefully thought out lines would disappear from his mind just like that. 

Or he could be talking to R and see Bond approach them from the corner of his eye, ready to ask him something about this or that gadget, and he’d end up giving the man a flimsy excuse about being busy or some such nonsense and advice him to go ask a minion instead, thus effectively destroying his chances at being alone with Bond at a place where his confession wouldn’t garner an audience. 

In short, Q manages to single-handedly ruin any and all chances he has to fulfill the terms of the wager, and as if that’s not quite enough, he’s also starting to receive worried glances from both R and Bond himself. Since neither of those is the result he’s been after, he finally has to admit the truth: he’s simply unable to do it. 

He can’t go to Bond and confess his feelings, and in doing so potentially ruin whatever friendship he has managed to cultivate with the man by making things awkward between them.

He just _can’t_ , and that’s that. 

He takes a deep breath and sends Eve the email where he admits as much. It’s short and to the point, and the act of pressing send is definitely harder than it has any right to be, but in the end it’s something that just has to be done. 

_You win._


	2. Chapter 2

The dreaded mission brief finds its way to Q’s email after two and a half months. 

Q hasn’t forgotten about it, mainly because Eve keeps bloody hinting at it from time to time, always looking perfectly satisfied with herself. She’s not telling him anything that could be even remotely useful about it either, just teasing him with her knowing smiles and her cryptic comments and those damned looks she keeps sharing with Bond whenever the three of them are in the same room. 

If Q didn’t know better, he’d suspect her of giving up his secret to Bond. 

But he does—he hopes, anyway—so it has to be about something else entirely. And whatever that something is, it clearly doesn’t concern him so he does his best to ignore it. 

He stares at the unread email for a minute or so, apprehension buzzing in the back of his mind like a hive of angry bees, and belatedly clicks it open when he realises that he’d just done so. 

Some words jump out at him from the mass of text he gets to read—newlyweds, honeymoon suite, romantic dinners in candlelight—and Q groans out loud. Clearly, Eve has gone all in; their covers are meticulously thought out down to every last detail, and she’s even gone as far as penning down suggestions for pet names to use, where to go for those romantic dinners, and how much physical contact will be expected of them in order for them to appear perfectly harmless in front of their target. 

Bond would no doubt be able to play his role of a protective, adoring husband madly in love with his spouse flawlessly. Q’s far more worried about his own ability to keep it all separate from the reality where he’s in love with Bond and Bond only sees him as a friend. 

Bloody Eve and bloody bets he’d have known not to accept while sober, he thinks wearily. 

However the fact remains that he did accept it, and he now needs to suffer the consequences of losing.

He only wishes that Bond will never find out how and why these particular covers came to be. 

*

Bond takes it all surprisingly well.

He’s delighted when he realises what he has to do and with whom, of course, but he also looks at Q with what Q detects to be concern mixed with incredulity and asks Q if he’s sure that he wants to do it.

He even offers to go to M and ask for someone else to replace Q if he so wishes.

Q’s touched, but he knows that if Bond did so Eve would not consider the terms of the wager fulfilled. Besides, he  _ wants _ to do it, now that he’s seen how Bond reacted, so he assures him that there’s absolutely nothing to worry about. He’ll be perfectly fine with acting as Bond’s husband, and if his silly heart gets any stupid ideas because of it, it’s for him to quietly deal with and Bond to remain oblivious of. 

Bond nods, although he looks mildly hesitant, and then surprises Q by asking him if he wants to practice the physical contact part beforehand; Q blinks and blushes and gets flustered enough to accidentally say yes.

(Well, perhaps not exactly accidentally.)

When they re-emerge from Q’s office some two hours later, Q’s hair is a complete disaster and he resolutely avoids anyone else’s eyes while he walks towards the kitchen area. He definitely needs tea and perhaps some biscuits as well.

Bond follows him there, because of course he does, looking unmistakably smug and as cocky as James Bond ever can.

Q glares at him despite being fully aware that it doesn’t faze him in the slightest, but in the end he does consent to share his biscuits with him. 

(But only because he asks very,  _ very _ nicely.)


End file.
